JeffMix 5 | 2018.02.10
My favourite five songs of the week
1 | U.S. Girls, “Rosebud”
Meg Remy, a.k.a. U.S. Girls, makes avant-garde pop music, an oxymoron if there ever was one. “Rosebud,” her latest pre-release track taken from In A Poem Unlimited (out Feb. 16), is one of the best examples of her radio-friendly/unfriendly take on the three-minute single.
2 | Kate Nash, “Drink About You”
Kate Nash was once the poster child for MySpace-found music: brash, bedroom-honed pop that hit a millennial nerve. And like MySpace, she seemed to be gone in a flash, moving on to a second career as an actress (most recently in the Netflix wrestling series GLOW). With “Drink About You,” Nash signals she’s ready for a musical comeback. Her style hasn’t changed, which could be an instant turn-off, but it’s hard to deny the Kelly Clarkson-ish fist-pumping chorus.
3 | Hercules & Love Affair, “My Curse And Cure”
Hercules & Love Affair, DJ Andy Butler’s disco project, released their fourth album last September and it seemed to hardly register. “My Curse And Cure,” the new single and video, could give the album new life. It’s a song “about the inevitability of pain in life,” according to Butler, in the time-honoured tradition of house tracks that mix tough times with dancefloor pleasures.
4 | BILK, “Give Up”
“Just another day in the life of a loser” starts “Give Up,” the new working-class punk single from Essex, U.K. trio BILK, a song more for the grinders in life than its winners. Its title might suggest letting go, but the chorus tells the real story: life might be dingy, but can’t give up.
5 | Chrystal, “2 Real”
Soundcloud artist Chrystal plays a delicate game on “2 Real,” straddling several musical worlds at once: there’s a bit of Lorde, Aaliyah, Rihanna and, in her slightly misfitting use of hip-hop, one-hit wonder Snow. Too real? Perhaps not, but too good to skip.
